Bloomberg sued in Texas by campaign workers promised pay, health care until November
Billionaire Mike Bloomberg promised workers on his presidential campaign jobs and health care through the November election, but laid off those workers the week after he dropped out of the race for the White House, a lawsuit filed Monday in Tarrant County alleges.
Monday afternoon, as the new coronavirus continued to spread locally and across the country, four workers in Tarrant County filed lawsuits against the former New York mayor claiming he committed fraud. Each seeks the salaries he promised them.
These are the first lawsuits against Bloomberg filed in Texas.
“Mike Bloomberg went back on his word and is engaging in Donald Trump business tactics, leaving those who helped him most high and dry during this COVID-19 crisis,” said Jason Smith, the Fort Worth attorney who filed the lawsuits in Tarrant County courts at law.
The lawsuits filed Monday were on behalf of Melinda Hamilton, Greg Snow, Argunda Jefferson and Abdoulaya Gueye, who were all working on Bloomberg’s campaign in Tarrant County.
Hamilton said they were promised jobs even if Bloomberg didn’t win the Democratic presidential nomination because they would “flip over and help whoever he wanted us to support.”
Each of the four lawsuits states that the staffers each were promised $42,000 this year, plus “employment benefits like paid leave during the COVID-19 crisis and health insurance.”
Each seeks less than $75,000 from Bloomberg.
In the lawsuits, campaign workers note that Bloomberg promised them that even if he “withdrew from his campaign, (he) would continue to employ and pay (them) through the November election ‘no matter what.’” Because of that, each person named in the lawsuits left other jobs or turned down other jobs to work for him.
Jefferson said she passed up other opportunities to work on Bloomberg’s campaign. While she believed this job would last through the general election, she worked for him about a month before she learned she was laid off.
“It was like someone punched me in the chest,” she said. “We were over-promised and under-delivered on the benefits we were told we would have through November.”
“Now, with the coronavirus going on, ... we are in a worse predicament than we were when we got with the campaign.”
As part of the contracts they signed, the campaign workers agreed “to not disparage” Bloomberg during — or after — they worked for him. The lawsuits state that if they knew Bloomberg would “go back on his word much in the style of Donald Trump” they wouldn’t have agreed “to not bad mouth Bloomberg.”
The Tarrant lawsuits filed Monday are not part of a nationwide class action lawsuit that alleges up to 2,000 campaign workers were promised to be paid through November.
Bloomberg jumped in to the presidential race late, focusing on Super Tuesday states such as Texas and spending millions of dollars on his campaign. After coming in third in Texas in the March 3 Democratic primary, behind former Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, he ended his campaign the next day.
Bloomberg’s presidential campaign last week announced a transfer of $18 million to the Democratic National Committee’s effort to help Democrats get elected in November.
When asked for comment about the Fort Worth lawsuits, a Bloomberg spokesman responded by email, saying the “campaign paid its staff wages and benefits that were much more generous than any other campaign this year. Staff worked 39 days on average, but they were also given several weeks of severance and healthcare through March, something no other campaign did this year.
“Given the current crisis, a fund is being created to ensure that all staff receive healthcare through April, which no other campaign has done. And many field staff will go on to work for the DNC in battleground states, in part because the campaign made the largest monetary transfer to the DNC from a Presidential campaign in history to support the DNC’s organizing efforts.”
Hamilton said she hasn’t received any information about such a fund. She was told she would get her last check on March 31, the same day her health insurance will expire. And she was told if she wanted to work for the DNC, she could go online and apply for a job with them.
“They did pay us good,” she said. “But we also had a contract saying we would have our job through November too.”
Snow said he has been involved in politics for awhile and has learned one thing.
“Your word is your bond,” he said. “Right now, Mike Bloomberg’s word means absolutely nothing.”
And now, with coronavirus spreading in Tarrant County and across the country, it’s an even bigger concern that they won’t have health care after this month.
“He put us all in this position,” Snow said. “He donates all this money for philanthropy. But all these people who were on the ground working for him, ... we went to battle for him. And he took away our pay, our benefits.
“He has the money. That’s not the issue. So I don’t know why he’s punishing his employees.”
